Jan
Interested in ice cream with a pop, bang, fizz?
Make Ice Cream with Dry Ice! It’s the fastest way to make ice cream and freezes in just a few minutes. It’s super yummy and has a tasty little fizz like soda pop.
Dry ice is even colder than ice from water. So even though you need to be careful handling it, this is a super fun activity for kids. Whether you are making it because it’s delicious or because it’s fast and fun, you are going to love this recipe. Read through these simple instructions and make your own ice cream with dry ice.
This is a standard and easy ice cream recipe but you can actually use any that you like. Check out these amazing ice cream recipes from Southern Living here.
We chose Strawberry because the fruit flavors go so well with the fizz from the dry ice. We’re not as fanatical about chocolatey flavors but you should still give them a try. You can even use the recipes that call for cooked ice cream and bypass a lot of the cooling time. Here is the basic cooked ice cream recipe here. This ice cream recipe uses egg as a stabilizer – an agent that allows you to put the ice cream in the freezer and stay fresh for longer. The recipe will explain the hows and whys which is phenomenally interesting.
So here’s the recipe for Ice Cream with Dry Ice:
Purchase the dry ice the day you want to make the ice cream. Dry ice isn’t easily stored at home! They have it at most grocery stores and sometimes at liquor stores too. Just call around to a few different places if you have any issues finding it at your favorite local shops. You must be careful while handling it but you can touch it, for a second or two, without it burning you. After that watch out! When you purchase the dry ice, it should come in a plastic bag with handles. It’s best stored in the freezer, wrapped in a couple of plastic bags until you’re ready to use it.
Mix the milk, cream, sugar and vanilla bean paste together in a bowl with an electric mixer or in our case we used a Kitchen-Aid Mixer. Use a lower speed because we just need to mix together all of these ingredients – nothing needs to be whipped and you only need to mix for around a minute. Using fresh fruit is the easiest for this recipe. We placed about 4 large de-stemmed strawberries in a plastic bag and smashed them with a tenderizer. That’s part of the fun part so smash away until the berries are just pulp!
Add the strawberries to the bowl and mix until the berries are evenly distributed with you milk base. Now for the extra fun part – the dry ice. Go ahead and think of something that makes you mad. Yeah, get it out of your system with this dry ice, because now you get to smash it with a tenderizer!
Place the dry ice flat on a cutting board and be sure to hold the bag while you are smashing. It’s really important to smash the dry ice into small bits and fine particles – like sand. Don’t add pebbly chunks! The dry ice can be added in small amounts to the mix. You only want to add enough dry ice for the ice cream to freeze into the temperature and texture of ice cream – if you add too much it can make the ice cream too hard to scoop or eat. We used around 3/4 of a cup of dry ice but this really can vary.
When you add and mix the dry ice you’ll get a magical puff of smoke like a witches brew! It’s really neat. All together your ice cream should just take a few minutes to make. This is literally the fastest way to make ice cream!
Enjoy.
Like Magic: Make Ice Cream with Dry Ice!
Ingredients
- 1 cup Milk
- 1 cup Cream
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 1 drop Vanilla Bean Paste
- 3/4 cups Strawberries
Instructions
- Purchase the dry ice the day you want to make your ice cream. Dry ice doesn't store well!
- Mix the milk, cream, sugar and vanilla bean paste in a stand mixer or with a hand blender until blended.
- Smash the strawberries and add them to the cream mix.
- Smash the dry ice into tiny sand sized particles.
- Add dry ice to the cream mix and blend. Keep adding dry ice until you get the frozen soft texture of ice cream (about 3/4 cups of dry ice).
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That looks great. I had no idea that you could even eat dry ice!
Yes, dry ice is safe to eat but it’s really important to make sure that dry ice is crushed into fine sand-like pieces. Dry ice is carbon dioxide so it will cause you to gasp if you get too big of a chunk!
Dry ice wohooo is it edible, safe, etc? Sounds like fun, yet I like my traditional ice cream. Thanks for sharing this variation though. Maybe will try it in summer. Too cold for ice cream for me.
Great question! It’s edible and safe – but it’s important to crush it to a very fine sand like texture and be careful while handling it because it’s soooooooo cold!
Fabulous post! Looking forward to the next ones!
This sounds like fun….and like it wouldn’t take as long. Pinning to try with my family! 🙂
Yes thank you so much! It’s great to make with kids because the dry ice creates a puff of smoke that is fun science magic!